Once Upon a time: Cooking … Baking … Traveling … Laughing …

Nazook – Gata ~ BBB

What makes it bread? If it has yeast, does that make it bread? How big does bread have to be before it’s a roll or a bun? Bread can be sweet, most would agree? Is this bread or pastry?
If the Babes are baking it, it’s bread. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I think these will stick with you too.Kelly is our kitchen of the month! As she notes, it maybe an odd name and it does have many names from various places but whatever you call it and whatever you stuff it with, these are utterly delicious. Hooray for cookie like yeasted sweet bread. I thank you for these small gems. Gorn thanks you for each one of the 15 he’s placed in his mouth in the last 2 hours. I only rolled two logs because I just had a feeling these were going to be way too big a hit. So the dough is back in the fridge and I’ll bake more tomorrow and take some to the library girls.
Changes? Oh but very small. I added my usual ground flax meal, used more vanilla, added lemon zest to dough (because if you’re going to juice a lemon why waste the zest) and since I found maple roasted walnuts I used those in place of plain. So maybe my changes were more than small but whatever they were, they worked well.
Regret: I didn’t think of using coconut flour until after I mixed the filling.

DOUGH:
Combine yeast, flour, salt and butter and blend with your fingers until crumbly.
Add egg, oil, lemon juice & zest, and sour cream. Mix until incorporated. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 5 minutes, or until no longer sticky. Add more flour if necessary. (I added some more flour).
Form into a ball, and to follow tradition, mark with a +, symbolizing a cross. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 5 hours, or overnight.

FILLING:
Mix flour, brown sugar, walnuts, and cardamom. Add vanilla to melted butter and pour slowly into flour mixture while stirring. Stir until the mixture is smooth. (Mine ended up a beautiful streusel consistency, at first a paste and then nice and crumbly as it cooled.)

PREHEAT oven to 350°F.

ASSEMBLY:
I omitted brushing the dough with more butter as I thought there was already plenty of butter.
Remove dough from refrigerator and divide into 8 equal portions. (I weighted the dough and divided by 8 then cut off that amount to shape.) Roll each dough ball into a 10 x 6” rectangle. Spread 1/8th of the filling over each rectangle, leaving a ½-inch border. Cover with a piece of parchment paper. Press down lightly with your hands, so that the filling adheres to the dough. Fold the edges in ½-inch over the filling.
Roll into a cylinder. Gently flatten with the palms of your hands. (Do this because they puff quite a lot in the oven.)
Cut each roll into 6 pieces and arrange on 2 parchment lined cookie sheets. Brush liberally with the egg glaze.
BAKE for 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown. Excellent with coffee or hot tea. Not too sweet, just sweet enough!

Notes for future baking:

This dough would make terrific mincemeat cookie shaped like this, would need to make it drier – maybe more nuts or coconut flour.
Fruit Filling: DATES, FIG, mixed with the nuts, this could be fairly dry.
Savory Filling: This dough begs for any number of savory fillings. Spinach, feta or goat cheese, red chili pepper- perhaps oat bran would dry/thicken.

I would have no hesitation to brush the flattened dough with a mix of cinnamon and brown sugar roll them and bake…even just brushed with butter and rolled plain these would be lovely. Since you get 8 rolls, it seems to me you have 8 opportunities to play in the sandbox.

Note that vanilla, cardamom, (and cinnamon for that matter), enhance the perception of sweetness, so if you don’t use both the vanilla and the cardamom, they may want a tiny bit extra sugar. As it is, there is only 1 tsp sugar per pastry and they are super satisfying because they are so rich.

These are actually fairly simple and easy to knead and assemble.

We would love for you to bake along with us! Just bake your version of this bread by March 30th and send Kelly a note with your results and a picture or link to your post at eleyana(AT)aol(DOT)com with Buddy Bread in the subject line and you will be included in our buddy round up at the beginning of next month. You’ll also get your Buddy badge graphic to keep and/or add to your post. You don’t have to have a blog to participate, a picture is fine!